Rusoro Mining declared victory yesterday in its four-year legal battle with the government of Venezuela over the nationalization of the gold industry in 2011. The company was awarded US$1.2 billion ($1.5B) by the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

The dispute began in 2011, when then-president Hugo Chavez nationalized the Venezuelan gold industry. Despite initially cooperating with the government, Rusoro later claimed that its right to mine was expropriated without compensation. In 2012, the company launched an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) case against Venezuela under the terms of the Canada-Venezuela Foreign Investment Protection Agreement, demanding $3 billion from the government for ending its mining concessions.